Our President's Day Weekend

I just have to say I love 3 day weekends and I think there should be more of them. 

That being said, Saturdays are quickly becoming my least favorite day of the week because it's another day I don't get to spend time with Zach. 

He has started shadowing at a PT clinic (yay!) on Saturday mornings from 8-12. This is a great experience for him and I'm super happy he was able to find a clinic so fast. 

For him to get into grad school he has to have somewhere between 20 to 100+ hours of PT observation experience. 

Each school requires different hours and experience from at least 2 different PT settings. 

 Once he is finished at the PT clinic he comes home to eat and change his clothes then he's out the door again to go to work and I don't see him again until 11:00 at night. 

He is a busy guy and I am so thankful for our Sundays off together. 

This past Sunday we bought a GoPro!

We have been wanting one for a while now and with our tax return we finally got one. 

We charged the batteries and then went for an evening drive to test it out. 

We had no idea how to use it but we just went for it. Unfortunately, when we got home we realized I had the setting on time lapse the whole drive so the footage was useless but we enjoyed our drive. 

We decided to try another GoPro adventure on Monday since we both had the day off. 

We woke up at 5:30 in the morning and drove to Makapu'u lighthouse. We wanted to capture the sun rising and try out time lapse the correct way. We walked quickly up the mountain and got our camera in position. 

Even though it was a little hazy out it was neat watching the sun rise and the clouds change color. 

We were back home by 8:30 and excited we still had the whole day ahead of us. 

When we downloaded the sunrise footage somehow we deleted it so we don't know if we got any cool footage. I guess we'll have to try a sunrise time lapse again. 

We spent the rest of our morning playing around with the GoPro, we even made our first movie! 

But we have been a little surprised by how complicated it's been figuring out how manage downloading the footage. It seems it should be simpler but I'm sure we'll figure it out over time. 

We spent the rest of our day at Waimanalo Beach with my old co-worker Amalis and her family. 

It was a beautiful day and we had a lot of fun playing in the water and filming. 

Sunday evening drive up Tantalus

Loved seeing the different colors in the sky and the sliver of moon

Adventures with him are the best!

Cotton candy looking clouds 

We love a good beach day with fun people! 

If you want to see our very first attempts at making GoPro movies click on the links below. 

Our skills are a work in progress so please don't judge!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IiwVF5MamAo&feature=youtu.be
And please don't mind how messy our house is! Kinda embarrassing!

http://youtu.be/mgx4aoHqBvg

Olomana

We did an amazing hike on Sunday. My friend from work, Gen loves to hike and she goes on all theses awesome hikes. Her and her boyfriend Gary went with us to Olomana. Olomana is 3 peaks in the middle of a valley outside of Kailua. You can see all the way from Makapu'u to Chinaman's Hat.
We only hiked the first peak and that's all we needed to do because the view is pretty much the same from the other two peaks and the first peak had plenty of rock climbing for us amateur hikers. We really enjoyed the hike, sore legs and all!

I love hiking with this handsome guy! 

Gen & Gary!

There were quite a few spots where we had to do some rock climbing, one spot was especially pure rock climbing and it was fun.  

Zach ran into some work buddies

Almost to the top...

At the top, such amazing view!

Looking down on Kailua town

The 2nd and 3rd peaks

Making our way back down the mountain

We were pretty drained afterwards. 

Hawaii Happenings

* I forgot to post this post in January. Posting it now so I can post about our Olomana hike.


It is one of our goals to see more of Hawaii this year and we have already planned a trip to Kauai in May, which we are really excited for.

The morning before we flew to Utah we got up at 5:30 and drove to the North Shore to watch the big wave surf competition. It has been on our list of things to do since we moved to Hawaii. It was a lot of fun to be a part of the crowd and watch the brave surfers conquer massive waves.

We were there before large amounts of people cover the beach so we got to watch them set up. 

We sat on the beach for about 4 hours just watching the waves and the surfers. There was one set of waves that were too big (about 2 stories high) for the surfers to attempt to ride. The crashing sound of those huge waves are incredible. 

In front of the Volcum house.

 Early in the morning before crowds of people took over the beach. 

The Brazilian, ranked #1 in the world ended up winning the competition. 

We want to go to more surfing competitions. 

On New Year's day we decided to take a little drive along the eastern side of the island. Driving along that part of coastline is one of my all time favorite drives. It was a beautiful day and a great way to welcome 2015. 

We stopped at Chinaman's hat. 

 And this secluded beach. 

 And Laie point. 

For our Sunday hike this past week we wanted to hike to the Pali puka. Zach read that the hike was short but steep and steep it was. We did not make it to the puka because it was pure cliff and we got a little nervous. 

On our way down the mountain  Zach said he also read that there was a waterfall under the Pali highway so since we were already there and we did not complete our hike we decided to hike to the waterfall. We walked along the old Pali highway and under the current Pali highway to a little waterfall. But we enjoyed the walk and it was neat being the only ones on the trail until we hiked back. 

The ridge to the Pali puka

Another amazing view.

Hiking to the water fall. 

On the old Pali highway. 

Under the highway. 

We appreciated the signs that lead us to the falls. 

What a dinky waterfall. 

Spend Less February

Seeing as February is the shortest month we have decided to not spend any money this month. Of course we are going to buy groceries, gas, supplies we may need, and pay our bills but we are not going to spend ANY money outside our already set budget. I have a personal budget of $30 a week that I can spend on whatever...lunch, coffee, crafts, or save up to buy new clothes but this month I'm not going to spend that money, so already I'll be saving $120.

It is important to us that we are smart with our money and living in Hawaii sometimes makes that a little difficult, seeing as things are more expensive here. But for the most part I think we manage our money well, we have our system dow but there's always room for improvement.

Zach and I both agree that it is important for us to save up for the things we want, the places we want to go, and for our future.

Our number one goal is to be debt free as much as possible. Yes, we both have credit cards we are working on paying off and a car payment but we have goals to pay those things off and those monthly payments are a part of our budget.

Since Zach and I moved to Hawaii we have struggled with meal planning and grocery shopping; it's not our favorite thing. I'll admit I'm not a cook and some days when I get home all I want for dinner is a bowl of cereal (great thing Zach loves cereal and he's OK with that meal option). But I want to get better at cooking and meal planning, I think it's important for our future.

We got to a point where we were fed up with spending $90 a week on groceries and coming home and asking, "what can we cook?". We were just getting the basics..... milk, bread, cereal, rice, oats, beans, cheese and occasionally produce so we could juice and that was our whole $90 grocery budget. I knew we were missing something. We did some research and decided this month we'd try grocery shopping 1 time for the whole month (we'll still get produce/milk once a week).  So we created our monthly meal plan and made a shopping list. We went to Costco during the Super Bowl on Sunday (have I mentioned I love Zach?) and got the bulk of our shopping done. We were surprised that we stayed within our budget and that we came home with things we could actually cook! We aren't that many days into following our meal plan but I think this is going to work for us and I'm feeling confident that we'll be able to save at least $60 a month by shopping this way. Of course, we'll see how we're doing towards the end of the month.

We only have to plan out 4 meals a week because Zach works 3 nights a week, which makes our first attempt at meal planning easier.

 February meal plan. 

We even put cereal nights on the calendar!

Our big Super Bowl shopping trip. 

This past Sunday we also explored along Diamond Head Beach.

It was good to go for a long walk on the beach.

We'll keep you posted on our February goals.